Once I was a clever boy learning the arts of Oxford... is a quotation from the verses written by Bishop Richard Fleming (c.1385-1431) for his tomb in Lincoln Cathedral. Fleming, the founder of Lincoln College in Oxford, is the subject of my research for a D. Phil., and, like me, a son of the West Riding. I have remarked in the past that I have a deeply meaningful on-going relationship with a dead fifteenth century bishop... it was Fleming who, in effect, enabled me to come to Oxford and to learn its arts, and for that I am immensely grateful.


Monday 17 January 2022

A Roman commercial community discovered in the Mendips


The Daily Express has a report about the discovery near Winscombe of a significant Roman, and later, community adjacent to the lead mining area of the Mendips in Somerset. This appears not dissimilar in many ways to the discovery in south Northamptonshire I posted about very recently in Roman trading town revealed in Northamptonshire

In the example from the Mendips it was found during archaeological work in anticipation of the laying of electricity cables. What it seems to reveal is a community which developed alongside the mining activities, which are well attested at the village of Charterhouse and which was then developed in the Constantinian era with new roads and left significant numbers of coins. From the evidence it indicates cross-country trading links to the Fosse Way and also a potential link to the coast for the export of lead ore to other parts of the Empire.



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1 comment:

John R Ramsden said...

I once read that there was reputed to be a Roman tin mine at a place called Barkham on the southern side of Exmoor:

https://www.google.co.uk/maps/place/Barkham/@51.0895679,-3.7386925,527m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m5!3m4!1s0x486dcf6013828f29:0x69f7d02c4f9aa0d4!8m2!3d51.0897263!4d-3.7363107

The site has a stream issuing from a spring and flowing down a steep valley, and this would perhaps more readily expose any promising ore-bearing rocks.

Conventional wisdom has it that the Romans never occupied most of Devon and Cornwall, west of the River Exe. I suspect this was a deliberate policy to leave an independent strongly-defended "toehold" of the country which they could pass through by agreement with the local king of the Cornuvi tribe to reinvade Britain in the event a governor went native and declared independence from Rome.

But the Romans did have watch towers dotted along the north coast of Devon, presumably to keep an eye on shipping in the Bristol Channel. So over time perhaps their civilization seeped into the native areas, with enterprising Romans venturing into the wild and woolly interior to seek out and exploit, among other things, mining opportunities.

John Ramsden

https://highranges.com

17 January 2022 at 20:33

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